- Jun 26, 2001
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Things are pretty slow here now. We've been running recon in ###### valley. The 12" of snow we just had has limmitted that a bit. We found a passable route through a new pass though and should be back soon. At 6K feet moving to passes at 7K feet to drop down into valleys at 5K feet the snow makes some of those roads/cuts pretty hairy. We've had contact with a local taliban element there and I don't want them to think I've forgotten about them. Before that we took down the village of #### ####. It was textbook recon stuf. The Italians wouldn't touch the place so me and another advisor rounded up some ANA , told command that we were moving out to meet the Italians ( we were, just 6 hours early) and we made a move through the town. Some knucklehead tried to blow us up with an IED but missed. We had to cut our ANA loose (remember, we weren't suposed to be there ) and waited for the Italians to show up at our rally point. They did, now me and Mojo had enough people to move back into the town. They Italians said NAY ( pashtune for no) they added you were not supposed to be in that village either ( messed up ROE in the ISAF AO) "well" said me and Mojo(the puerto rican warrior) "we were and they tried to blow us up, we'd like to go back in there and discuss that with whome ever the responsible party is" .."NAY". so we got a mission approved by the gods and took the place down. Text book stuf. My recon set up far survielance, i took a recon team of 4 others and did a near recon of the village overnight then moved into a hide, overwatch of the 2 target houses, and waited for morning. I wanted my interpritor (terp) to video the patrol with my night vision camera but he said "nay, i hold AK47 instead". I couldn't argue with his logic. We swept the town under cover of darkness, like ghosts, never even raised a bark from any of the million dogs. We moved into a near facing ridge about 50 meters from the target house and hunkered into crags for the night. I believe I've permanately lost 2" of my willey because of the cold shrivel factor on that night. I'll make due with 1", anyway, sun came up, villagers were unaware of our positions because the sun crested above our ridge blinding any ability to spot us till well after the raid kicked off. I had a front row seat as the take down team came in and took down the 2 target houses. I was able to get out of my freezer hole then, lay up on the ridge in the sun and enjoy a full flavored camel cig then. We eneded up pulling out a laundry list of explosives and such, taking into custody 1 man. We pulled out something like, 17 frag grenades, 13 RPG warheads and rockets, 9 42MM motars, 14 81MM mortars, 2 120MM mortars, 3 anti personell mines, 2 anti tank, 5 mine fuses/detonators, 4 cases 14.5 MM AA ammo, 3 cases 12.7mm DSHKa (soviet .50 cal, i've got a DSHKa mounted on my uparmored humve, one i liberated, drives command nuts, i'll send pics) and about 5 cases 7.62X39 AK47 ammo. Good haul for the day. So far i've suffered no KIA. They've hit me 3X with IEDs though, knuckleheads. I'm supposed to rotate back in mid may but am going to extend through july. The spring offensive this year looks like, from all intell and indicators ( I am recon after all, i find the battlefield intel..HA!) that this year will be bigger than since we first started fighting this war. The news aint covering any of it back home but we have Taliban/Alquedia moving in 200-300 man elements, we've got 700-800 battalion sized elements out east ( see operation redwings) 1,200-1,500 in the interior and up to 300 man enemy units attacking our Forward operating bases down South east. I don't wanna miss the big show this spring. Alrighty then. I'll send when i get back to Bagrahm, we've got no email'i net at our FOB. SFC Crash is now SFC Dick. :p
